Tag: democracy

Two all beef patties,special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun or a “Nothing Burger”

How do you like your burger? Fully loaded or just meat and bun? We have a new type of burger in America now…a “Nothing Burger”! Lately this new term has taken the television waves by storm. I think if I hear one more Republican call the spy novel we are inhabiting right now a “Nothing Burger”, I may be nauseous. Just what is included in a “Nothing Burger”? Their so-called “Nothing Burger” includes an awful lot of Russian ingredients. It is loaded with alternative facts, prevarications, flat-out denials and a perverse refusal that any of those Russian secret sauce ingredients are present. My personal favorite, the “Fully Loaded Burger”, comes with true indisputable facts, evidenced based science, reality over perception…dates, times, players, secret meetings exposed, actual true information, a regular Snopes of the culinary world .

How does one forget a meeting with a Russian official? How does one forget a meeting with a Russian official where an interpreter is needed? Why has Trumpulthinskin never acknowledged Russian interference in our presidential election? Why does he appear to embrace Putin as his best friend? An autocrat who has robbed the Russian people of billions of dollars, Putin arranges the deaths of dissidents, invades other countries to promote the Russian agenda, eliminates media threats and rules with a heavy hand, all while added to his own personal coffers.  These are but a few of his transgressions. His agenda is always about rebuilding the power and might of Russia and what better way to do this than to destroy the credibility of American democracy.

Democracy is the Fully Loaded Burger. This burger makes your mouth water just at the sight of its “beautifulness”, full of wonderful pleasures that meld together to give one a satisfactory belly full of goodness and happiness throughout a lifetime. When you are the best, the competition is always trying to land a knock out punch and take your place. Trumpulthinskin and his minion’s collusion with the “Nothing Burger” are willing to do anything for a win even if that win means the death of morality, ethics, the demise of truth, the elimination of all that is so cherished by Americans. He is and continues to be Putin’s puppet.

I still believe that eventually the “Fully Loaded Burger” will prevail, that truth will triumph over lies, that goodness will deal a death-blow to evil, that “love WILL trump hate”. The competition is fierce though and we will have to be vigilant and strong, persisting and resisting to keep our “Fully Loaded Burger” the best of the best and assure the survival of truth.

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Always seek the truth, examine all sides of an argument, read to educate yourself about just what is at stake when we walk into a voting booth to choose the guiding hand for our nation. It may be painful to watch a news channel that may not support your beliefs but being uncomfortable can lead to enlightment or at least a better understanding of all sides of an issue. Your very life may depend upon the choice you make.

Happy bird searching followed by two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun!

 

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Death of Democracy and Common Decency – The Criminality of Corrupt Politicians

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My tears are flowing again like a river flushed with the melting snows of a heavy winter. I cry for the lack of humanity exhibited by elected officials who believe that removing healthcare from tens of millions of Americans is the right thing to do, the moral and ethical thing to do. What motivates these people, these beasts from Hell, to think that a tax cut for the richest top 1% of our population is worth the loss of health care for millions of poor, sick, mentally ill or disabled Americans? I cry for all the elderly who will be uprooted from nursing homes, for their children who must reconstruct their lives to care for  Mom, Dad, Grandma or Grandpa, for the elderly who must make choices between food or life saving medications and for the parents of an infant born with multiple congenital birth defects who must bankrupt their lives to provide major care.

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Medicaid is the largest healthcare provider in the United States insuring 75 million Americans. I encourage everyone to watch the Rachel Maddow show of June 22, 2017 to understand the full scope of the criminality of what is being attempted by the Republican party led by the meanest toad of a man Mitch McConnell. Medicaid provides healthcare for 50% of all babies born today in the United States, 60% of all poor children, and helps the disabled to remain in their home rather than in institutions. In other words, protection for the most vulnerable members of our society.

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There are a multitude of cartoons and comic skits on television about tRump and his best friend Putin. Laughter is medicine to help us survive untenable things. They may temporarily relieve anxiety, but unfortunately what is happening to our democracy is no laughing matter. We may be witnessing the death of “truth” in our nation and moving to a world of lies and falsehoods. Daily tRump and his minions attack the media as “fake news” and as America watches, we are witnessing the dismantling of the democracy our forefathers fought to ensure when they penned the Constitution, the bedrock for life and liberty, that was fought and paid for in blood hundreds of years ago.

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As Americans we have come to expect and enjoy, in fact take for granted, the safety of our water supply, the assurance of clean air to breathe, the guarantee that the food we eat is free of harmful pesticides . The environmental and health protections achieved for over 40 years are being systematically swept away. The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe may be suspect in the near future if the deconstruction of the EPA continues at this alarming rate.

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The constant barrage of “unimaginable” things that this administration is  trying to  implement  is numbing our senses and lulling us into the beginning acceptance of this behavior as being the “new norm”. This acceptance or complacency is the beginning of the decline of democracy as we know it.  Sadly, this loss of “truth” or the normalization of “alternative facts”  is to watch America sink into an Orwellian “1984” society where what we believe is dictated by the “Big Brother” government, driven by the elite few seeking wealth and power to the detriment of millions of everyday hard-working citizens.

I cry for my nation as it writhes in death throes. I cry for the millions of my compatriots, fellow citizens, that will succumb to death if this administration is allowed to dismantle all that is good and wonderful about our way of life. My tears flow freely trying to wash away the pain of what I am witnessing on a daily basis.

Are you crying yet?

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The Cycle of Life

 

 

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Today I was reminded to check out the Cornell University bird cams to revisit Ezra and Big Red, the Red-Tailed Hawks at Cornell University and Iris & her new mate Louis, the Ospreys, in Missoula Montana. Tearfully, I was saddened to learn that apparently Ezra the great Red-tailed Hawk provider and father of at least 15 nestlings, was euthanized after a fatal wing injury received in the wilds of nature where he lived his entire life. And his mate for all those years Big Red was soaring the skies over and around the Cornell area in mourning for her lost mate yet driven by instinct to find another. Will she be successful for this season is anyone’s guess. But nature has a way of balancing the uneven. And in Montana I was heartened to see that Iris is protecting her nest as Louis continues to reinforce it with huge sticks that they meticulously weave into the perfect home for their nestlings. So hope followed despair much as it does throughout life.

The hardship of living life is not confined to humans alone. Birth, Life, Drama and Death are an integral part of all life on our planet. Most human and other animal and bird species just want the basics…a place to nest, raise their young, food for their brood and to live peacefully to a ripe old age enjoying the bounties of our universe.

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Fortunately for most species, life is rhythmic and very mundane filled with the ordinary tasks of daily survival. For birds, it is a cycle of hunting food, mating, raising young, protecting the home nest, teaching their young and then launching them into flight. For humans our days are filled with chores, learning skills, making choices, buying and cooking food, birthing our children and schooling them in the ways of life prior to launching them into their own life cycle. Along the way tragedies happen…events that may scar us emotionally or physically… and we will either succumb or survive.

Our Democracy is under assault right now. A war is being waged….one which threatens to interrupt the cycle of human life as well as bird and animal life. With the elimination of the EPA, our environment might become a more hostile place. Threats may be present in the air we breathe or the water we drink or in the destruction of our homes as glaciers and polar caps melt giving rise to ocean waters. Climate change is real and denying it only proliferates the harm to both man and beast. Democracy will either survive or suffer the fate of many nations throughout history and fall.

Promoting unrest, fomenting racial strife, using alternative facts, fleecing America and mounting a continuous assault on the many institutions that have so valiantly sustained our government and America’s position as a major world leader on our planet is treasonous.

As we sit on the brink of perhaps the most dangerous threat to nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis, our life cycle is interrupted with worry, stress, uncertainly, depression. Our nation has become divided and it has become increasingly difficult to decipher fact from fiction. In a world where trust is needed most, it exists less.

We have no control over most of these events except to never forget…

Nevertheless we must persist!!! And I will survive!!!

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